Account planning is, for me, the bridge between reality and creativity when it comes to developing the social marketing and health communications programs that inspire and move our audiences (as well as many of our peers). Whether they carry such a moniker in your world, you uncover account planners (pdf file) by their fascination with the audience and understanding of their reality. They can then take the uncommon step of not just reporting what they have learned, but can transform and frame these observations into insights and suggestions that spark the creative fires of everyone around them.
As regular readers of this blog know, I am a BIG fan of this process (see here and here). I also have a certain simpatico with account planners, so Craig Walmsley's article on how planners need to adjust to the Web 2.0 era speaks equally well to the people working on social as well as commercial accounts. Here are two excerpts:
It is insufficient to understand demographic or attitudinal information about a target audience. Who the individual is, what they want and are interested in, how they receive communications, and how they buy must all be viewed through the prism of the individual’s understanding and use of technology...
Having to understand both the attitudes and behaviors of customers with respect to Brands, messages and technologies, planners should be in a position to understand the “creative,” “media” and “technical” teams, and provide a means to translate communications between them. Planners will broker the ideation process, using customer insight as the effective means of exchange. In addition, having formulated the desired end of the activity, the planner will be in an ideal position to validate that the proposed solution is relevant, actionable and on message.
The opportunities posed by the growing acceptance of new media among many of our audiences for social marketing and social change programs (and this includes the audiences necessary for success) can be summed in the 5Es: how to educate, engage, entertain, empower and evangelize with our audiences, not at them.
It's not about using new media; it's about using media in new ways.
You'll recognize the people you work with who don't get it when you experience this scenario (also from Craig's article):
The usual ad agency response to such changes [new media] is to insist that they are “media-neutral” and “idea-focused”. Of course, they say, we know that digital has an impact, we’re not living in the past! – and look! - this tag line can be put in a banner! This response is just not cutting the digital mustard anymore.
Technorati Tags: Account Planning. Advertising, Audience Insight, Communications Programs, Marketing, Social Media
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